§ Miss Emma NicholsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1) if he will reconsider the proposed language of the EC software directive to ensure that legitimate activities, hitherto legal under United Kingdom law, do not become inadvertently violative of copyright;
(2) what work his Department has undertaken to study the legislative implications in the United Kingdom of the draft EC software directive.
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§ Mr. LeighMy Department has kept legislative implications continually under review during negotiations on the directive. The Department's 'assessment of those implications was set out in the explanatory memorandum submitted to the Scrutiny Committee on 20 November 1990. The directive will require member states to give copyright protection to computer programs as literary works, which is already the case in the United Kingdom. The protection affordable and the legality of current activities will not change to any significant degree.